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Who was Cassandra?

In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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June 14, 2013

A Calm Interior

Today I put some color on a drawing that I did when visiting our family near Philadelphia. I started on a left-hand page, drawing this brass coffee pot and the cross-stitch tapestry hanging on the wall. When I moved over to the right-hand page and the continuation of the shelf under another window, the scale of things got distorted. It was pretty funny. I kept going, but the drawing/painting doesn't work as a whole; the composition is bad when the tapestry is right in the middle, and the coffee pot looks as large as the lamp! It's OK as two halves though.

One of my teachers told me never to be afraid to cut things up or to look at drawings and paintings using cropping tools. He was right; it often helps, and it's so much easier now, in digital image editing programs!

That's an Inuit sculpture between the lamp and plate; it's a mother leaning over with a baby in her arms, perhaps to pick it up. The mother has on a thick parka and mittens and the baby is all swaddled too; it's carved in soapstone. My brother-in-law, now retired, was a doctor in ob/gyn, and he has collected Inuit prints and sculptures, especially those depicting childbirth and mothers and children, since his medical school days in Canada when the annual Cape Dorset print editions were being offered by just a few galleries. However, the little figure on the windowsill is an Asian dancer, and I think it probably dates back to my sister-in-law's days in India. Their home has a very calm feeling, with white walls, lots of books, and very little clutter. If we'd had more time there, I'm sure I would have drawn a lot more.